His report, titled Vancouver’s Social Safety Net: Rebuilding the Broken, takes the reader into a fictional world in which an anonymous writer and an overzealous graphic designer weave together a story of greed, incompetence and bureaucratic disruption in Vancouver and the city. Downtown Eastside. Too bad most of it is misleading nonsense. The headline, as leaked to Global BC this week, was that the public spends $5 billion a year on the city’s social safety net despite hundreds of people dying of overdoses, horrific conditions in single-occupancy hotels (SROs), tent cities, worsening poverty and increasing crime. Many of these trends are indeed accurate, especially around the worsening overdose crisis. But if you look at that “social safety net,” you’ll quickly discover that $2 billion of the $5 billion listed is direct federal transfers that go to all Vancouverites in the form of things like the Canada Pension Plan, Old Age Security , Employment Insurance and Child Tax Benefits. Financial assistance for the elderly and pension plans for all? Hardly wonderful in the Downtown Eastside. However, VPD bypasses this kind of precision. In doing so, he allows himself to write some downright ridiculous statements in the “Did you know?” section of his summary, which reads: “UBC and SFU have a combined budget of less than $3.8 billion. That means $5 billion would be more than enough to make post-secondary education tuition-free in Vancouver.” Or: “As another comparison, C$5 billion is roughly equivalent to US$4 billion – more than NASA’s annual budget for the International Space Station (ISS).” Or: “It’s also comparable to the annual operating budget of the entire National Hockey League (NHL).” None of these comparisons make any sense at all. But if we’re going to play the game of dumbing down the reader by contrasting apples to oranges, here are some for you: Did you know that the entire annual budget of the VPD is equivalent to about 100 bottles of the world’s most expensive tequila, called Diamond Sterling Tequila by Ley925; Or, did you know it also compares to 300 gold-plated toilets of the type Kanye West and Kim Kardashian once installed in their Bel Air mansion? Think about it for a minute, why not. Now, back to reality as it is. The VPD summary concludes that $1.1 million a day is spent on “philanthropic investments in Downtown Eastside-based nonprofits,” while poverty and crime worsen. However, to untangle this unreliable number, you need to open the actual 81-page report on which the VPD summary was based, written by the “social technology” company Helpseeker Technologies. And once you do that, you start to see that there are big problems there, too. It appears the Alberta-based Helpseeker relied on the organizations’ address in the Canada Revenue Agency’s charity database to reach the outrageous set of Vancouver and Downtown Eastside magnates. In the process, it has captured non-profits and charities that provide services across the province and should never be counted as Vancouver-specific. Take, for example, the Legal Services Society, which is the not-for-profit legal aid provider for all of BC Helpseeker throws in its report the society’s total revenue of $105 million across the province as if it were all a community service for Vancouver. There is also $78 million in revenue from the Criminal Psychiatric Services Commission, which Helpseeker includes as social security spending in Vancouver, when in fact it operates regional clinics in Kamloops, Prince George, Surrey, Victoria, Nanaimo and Vancouver. Then there’s the Burnaby Search and Rescue Association, which is inexplicably on the list even though it also carries out humanitarian aid missions overseas. Helpseeker makes a small admission that he’s wronged some of the organizations, but it’s so buried in his exposition that the audience will likely never see it. “The available data do not allow us to determine the extent to which a service is well provided, which catchment area it serves,” he writes. Too bad no one leaked it publicly. The disclaimer was definitely not included in VPD’s graphic-heavy report. Then there is the report’s definition of charity. It’s written in a way that gives the impression of greedy groups in downtown Vancouver, raking in cash while social problems worsen down the street. Except, if you look at the actual list of charities (found in one of the appendices of the report), you’ll find groups like the Aquafit For All Association and the Urban Horse Project Society. Even the BC Children’s Hospital Foundation and the UBC Hospital Foundation have gotten into the mix. The definition of philanthropy seems so vague that it includes many groups that are hardly social network providers in the Downtown Eastside. You could go ahead and kill this whole report, but there’s no point. It seems clear what is going on with this leak. The timing comes as premier-designate David Eby prepares to be sworn into office and provides a clear picture of the BC Liberal Opposition. “David Eby spent over a quarter of a billion dollars buying hotels and motels, overpaying for them, and then storing people with serious mental health and addiction problems in those hotels, wreaking havoc on the streets and neighborhoods around those areas.” , said the leader of the Liberals. Kevin Falcon told Global, to coincide with the release of the leaked report. The leak was also convenient timing for Vancouver Mayor Ken Sim, who has promised to boost VPD resources with 100 new officers and whose tough-on-crime message helped sweep his party on city council. But even Sim took issue with the VPD’s summary, noting, for example, that the figures listed for the city’s fire and rescue budget don’t add up or make sense. He told Global, “those are questions that we really need to ask because before we can make any definitive comments about the effectiveness of what’s happening in the city of Vancouver, we really need to understand where they’re getting their numbers from. “ Either way, the new mayor should be asking the questions. But he might not like the answers. Because the VPD summary, and much of the department-commissioned report, are misleading works of fiction. The whole affair, including the leak, was clearly an attempt to embarrass Downtown Eastside agencies and various governments. But along the way, the VPD has only been embarrassed. Rob Shaw has spent more than 14 years covering BC politics, now writing for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestseller A Matter of Confidence and a regular guest on CBC Radio. [email protected]
